Obeying doctor's orders, Annie Miller gave her last tour through the bayous and marshes of western Terrebonne Parish in January.

The first lady of the swamp, as the master outdoorswoman was dubbed decades ago, said the decision to end her career on the water -- and nearly a quarter-century of shocking and delighting tourists from around the world -- was one of the most painful in her life.

"I miss it very, very much," said Miller, whose ailing heart prevents her from boarding her beloved tour boat and greeting her favorite alligators. "I miss those swamps, believe you me. I miss the outdoors, the alligators, the birds. I miss the swamp, period."

But Miller, who still lives in the Alligator Lane home where busloads of tourists have been meeting for swamp tours since 1979, can take comfort in the fact that her international legacy as a warm-hearted entertainer and

wildlife enthusiast will go on, despite her noted absence from the water.

Miller's youngest son, 57-year-old Jimmy Bonvillain, is taking over the business his fabled mother and father long ago developed into one of Terrebonne Parish's -- and south Louisiana's -- most popular tourist destinations.

Bonvillain, who lives next door to his mother along with his wife, Pamela, and 16-year-old son, has already renamed the famous business: Annie Miller's Son's Swamp and Marsh Tours.

"I asked him why he wanted me in the name," said Miller. "He said, 'Everyone knows you.' But I think that, in time, everyone will know Jimmy, too."

Bonvillain's passion for the ever-changing swamp rivals his mother's, and he loves introducing tourists from around the world to the labyrinth of bayous and marshes where he was born and raised.

"You'd be surprised what you learn from the people and the marsh," said Bonvillain, who has been helping his mother satisfy droves of tourists with two-hour swamp rides since 1987, when he got his Coast Guard license.

"I learn more and more each time I go out," said Bonvillain. "I love the outdoors."

Still, though he is taking over the business, Bonvillain knows the importance of preserving Annie Miller's visionary imprint on the swamp-tour industry, which didn't take off in south Louisiana until years after the Millers carved their niche in Bayou Black.

On each tour he gives now, Bonvillain tells tales of his mother, nicknamed Gator Granny in the early-1990s by a national tabloid.

"I give a little background on my mom, how she got started, how she caught snakes and alligators and trap," said Bonvillain. "I tell them she's a musician, plays the piano, the organ and the trumpet. Then I tell them she also had her commercial pilot's license. People are amazed. She really has done it all."

Jimmy was a young boy when Annie married Eddie Miller at a hospital in Abbeville on Easter Sunday, 1956. The April 21 wedding date was also Annie and Eddie's birthday.

The day was planned long before Eddie, a 200-pound man, fell 40 feet from an offshore oilrig during a violently windy afternoon. When doctors later announced Eddie was paralyzed from his neck down, Annie was horrified but she didn't miss a beat.

The couple married in Eddie's hospital bed, with his broken neck supported by sandbags.

"He was the best human being that I've ever seen," said Annie of her late husband. Eddie Miller died last year.

"We had been married for 45 years," she said. "Not once in all that time did he ever raise his voice to me."

Through rehabilitation Eddie gradually regained some feeling in his lower body. But he never recovered completely.

The Miller's lived, worked and played together. Because of Eddie's injuries, his movement was limited. So, wearing white garden gloves, Annie would trap -- snake, mink, muskrat, raccoon, otter and nutria -- and Eddie would drive the boat.

"He just never let it bother him," said Bonvillain. "He didn't sit around and mope. He wore a brace on his leg and made the best of it."

In the late 1970s, the two even tried their hand at commercial crabbing until the rocking boat began affecting Eddie's health.

It was around 1979 when Betty Reed from the local chamber of commerce approached Annie Miller about promoting Houma tourism -- at the time mostly centered around sugar cane and Southdown Plantation -- with swamp-boat tours.

What started as a basic bayou-area nature ride in a two-seat marsh buggy quickly developed into a surprisingly successful business for the Millers, who soon upgraded to an 18-passenger boat to accommodate families on their twice-a-day tours.

Alligator Annie's tours were first broadcast in 1980 on a television program called "PM Magazine." Thanks to the publicity -- and the fact that the once-endangered alligator was making a comeback in the early 1980s -- business boomed, so much so that Miller later nicknamed a favorite gator, "Boomer."

Soon Alligator Annie began doing what she is best known for today -- feeding alligators raw pieces of chicken from her boat, just inches from her face and to the delight of camera-wielding tourists.

Miller's feeding stick was crude -- a wooden pole with a half-inch metal skewer fastened to one end. After gaining the trust of an alligator, Miller gradually got the feisty swamp creature to come closer to her tour boat by chanting her telltale "Baa-bee .. baa-bee" for a few minutes.

"They are dumb creatures, but with individual personalities," said Miller. "Some are wild, some are tame."

Like his mother, Bonvillain's alligator nicknames evolved based on each creature's characteristics.

Lightning swims underwater before shooting up for a cold chicken leg.

Li'l Red is for a little boy named Justin, who requested this year an alligator be named in his memory.

As Annie Miller's swamp tours became more brazen, tourists and the media flocked to her little home off Bayou Black Drive. After the World's Fair came to south Louisiana in 1984, other swamp tour businesses started up, but few had the spectacle Annie had come to master in Bayou Black.

Annie Miller's swamp tours, which still meet at the Bayou Delight restaurant before taking off at a nearby dock, have been featured on television stations and in newspapers around the world. Over time, people have become so fascinated with the illustrious Annie that several songs have been written about her.

Here's a biographical verse in "Ode to Annie" by LaVerne Bailey Bourn:

"Her Eddie was an oil rigger sweatin' in the sun

"Eddie got hurt, now his leg don't run

"He say, 'How we gonna make it Annie, what we gonna do

"I can't work no more Annie, how Žbout you?'

" 'Eddie, I can sack a snake and some alligator too

"and I hear it's all right to catch and sell a few.' "

Annie Miller was even featured in a January 1987 issue of the German adult magazine, Ugens Rappo, the German equivalent to Playboy.

She once sold an otter named Cookie to Walt Disney for use in two movies: "An Otter in the Family" and "A Day in Teton Marsh."

One of the first to befriend alligators, Annie Miller also talked about preserving wetlands long before the topic became popular with politicians. She saw the land sinking, and she's won numerous conservation awards.

Bonvillain also includes coastal-erosion anecdotes on his tours. He often points out widened waterways, places where trees have fallen because of sinking soil and a 1950s cow pasture that's now a pond.

"Things change, not necessarily for the better," said Bonvillain.

"Miss Annie's the one who started it all," said Jane Roberts, who has been working at Bayou Delight restaurant the past 14 years. "They still come in asking for her."

Part of Annie Miller's appeal, says Bonvillain, is the fact that she is a woman trapper in a field dominated mostly by men. Miller, who learned to maneuver outdoors thanks to her mother, Dora, is a businesswoman, and she's worked all her life using her hands to support her family, he said.

"It was easy to pick up on a woman, especially one that started in the swamp tour business when she was 65 years old," he said.

Annie Miller said people's fascination with her may be more literal.

"They were wondering how I didn't get my hand bitten off," she said.

Unlike his mother, Jimmy operates swamp-and-marsh tours year-round, because there's just as much to see in the winter as the warm summer months, he said.

Bonvillain runs daily tours at 10 a.m., and 1 and 5 p.m., or by appointment.

Tours cost $15 for adults; $10 for children; ages 3 and under are free. Group rates are available.